


Loss is the Price We Pay to Live

by RedHead



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Funerals, Grief
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-04
Updated: 2016-07-04
Packaged: 2018-07-21 13:38:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7389133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedHead/pseuds/RedHead
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When he was eleven, at his mother’s funeral, Barry learned that death was lonely.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Loss is the Price We Pay to Live

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [His whole life has been punctuated by funerals.](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/211666) by fastestdorkalive (Tumblr). 



 

 

When he was six, the last of his four grandparents passed away.

He hadn’t been close to his grandmother, his mom’s mother, aside from two yearly visits at Christmas and in the summer. She lived south, spending her days somewhere warmer, with a lower crime rate than Central. She had friends and things to keep her busy, and Barry knew his mom would visit her a few times each year, often a weekend trip while Barry spent time with his dad.

He barely knew her, but she was the only grandmother he’d known all. His father’s parents had passed away when he was a baby still, ‘untimely’ as they said, an accident. He’d never met his mother’s father, and she didn’t talk about him. But his Gram? She was a smiling face, crinkled eyes that glittered with a fond mischief, a sweet or chocolate hiding out of sight until Barry did something that caught her by surprise. Gram loved surprises.

Except, probably, the surprise stroke that caught her alone in her apartment and swept her away in Death’s dark shroud.

That was when Barry first learned that Death’s color was black. Black suits, black dresses, black drapes, black veils. The only splashes of color were the flowers, amidst the sea of adults whispering to each other about ‘how sad’ and ‘how unfortunate’ it was. 

Sitting on a hard wooden church bench, trying not to fidget, sitting on his hands and willing his restless legs not to kick during a sermon gone far too long, he didn’t quite understand. Gram was dead. He knew that. She wasn’t coming back, death was permanent. But he didn’t know why it needed so many _words_.

His mother delivered a eulogy. She was sad, crying for the first that Barry had ever seen, and it made him feel tight and wrong, like his skin was too small. Like he wanted to fix it, but couldn't.

When he was six, Barry first learned that death was a cause to be sorry. For what, he didn't know. After all the words were said, people came up to his mother to tell her how ‘sorry’ they were, holding her hand. Barry wanted to tell her he was sorry because everyone else had, but he didn’t know for what. He just wanted her to stop crying, his dad’s arm around her, but he didn’t know how to make her smile.

 

[ … ]

 

When he was eleven, Barry couldn’t shake the feeling that death was hunting him, was _going_ to hunt him.

When his mother died, Barry didn’t want to go to the funeral. He locked himself in his room, hid in the closet, tucked his arms around himself in the dark, and willed the day to end before it had to begin. He kicked and screamed when Joe tried to lift him out of the closet, exhausted of coaxing with kind words, worried about being late, about Barry being late.

He was told in no uncertain terms that he was going, sobbing as he was, and Joe looked more shaken than tired when he said he didn’t want to, told him he had to. The man laid out the black suit for Barry on the bed and there was no escape, not really. He hugged Barry until Barry shook him off, stiff, Iris’s head poking in to the door of the room, asking if he was ready yet.

He was silent after that, sullen, eyes dry because he had nothing left to give. Sick, but he didn’t throw up on the drive. He didn’t want to give anyone the satisfaction. He didn’t know who _would_ be satisfied, but he still didn’t want it.

He lost count of the number of people who came up to him, shook his hand, and told him they were sorry. Each time it was like a wrench to the knife that was in his gut, the one that had taken up residence there the night his mother died, twisting and turning with each new blow in his father’s case. His father who should be here but couldn’t be.

Barry didn’t fidget on the seat, or cry, or deliver a eulogy, or do any of the things his mother had done for her mother. He watched through a fog, a dimness to the sounds around him, cotton balls in his ears, an almost-ringing. He couldn’t take his eyes off the coffin, off of her.

His mother was beautiful in death, like her mother before her. Face calm, hair curled and cascading, no evidence of blood and horror and the crime that took her. But death, he knew then, was ugly. His mother’s death was an ugly, gruesome thing, shrieking and screaming and sobbing and broken. He stared too long at her relaxed face, too still to be sleeping. I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry—

He still didn’t know why people would say sorry to him, because he was only saying it to her.

When he was eleven, at his mother’s funeral, Barry learned that death was lonely. That Joe’s hand on his shoulder, Iris’s fingers entwined with his, a thousand apologies—that nothing could make it _less_ lonely. It was black because it was bleak, and it was bleak because it meant being more alone than you had been before, that you’d never be _less_ alone, only more.

 

[ … ]

 

When he was twenty-five, there were no invitations to funerals for Danton Black, for Bette Sans Souci, for Mason Bridge.

The bodies of Tony Woodward, Farooq Gibran, Hannibal Bates, and Jake Simmons piled up one by one in the room Cisco retrofitted into a functioning morgue in the basement of the lab. The intent was to incinerate them eventually, but none of them could bring themselves to stomach doing it, to destroy the little that was left of who these people had been. People they had failed.

Those bodies were not dressed in tones that complimented the color of their skin, weren’t given make up to mask the pallor of death and put their faces at ease. Their hands laid at their sides in body bags in drawers, a disservice that they were helpless to know how to rectify, out of their depth. Constantly out of their depth.

When he was twenty-five, Barry learned that you could look death in the eye as it happened. That someone could let go of your hand, that you could cradle it in your arms as it went live to explode, that you could be too slow (never fast enough), too slow to move someone out of the line of fire from the cold gun, too slow to catch the bullet that wrought the life of a man used as a pawn to taunt him. He learned that looking away was a disservice but that it never got easier. Death never got easier. He doubted that it was meant to.

 

[ … ]

 

Barry bought a fresh suit for Eddie’s funeral.

He took his time to select it, normal speed, fingers gliding over smoother and rougher fabrics, each shade of black imaginable, deeper and deeper. He was sized for it, shoulders broader than they’d ever been. He supposed they’d had to strengthen and widen for the weight they now carried, unwelcome though it was.

All he’d wanted was to see his mother smile again.

The funeral had more pomp and ceremony than any of the ones Barry had seen before. It was his first funeral for a fallen officer, with a salute and a line of men in official dress, a flag adorning the casket, the entirety of the precinct in attendance except those that were on duty that day.

It was his first time as a pal bearer, helping to carry a casket that was filled only because of him.

Eddie died a hero’s death and Iris gave his eulogy. Barry did not fidget and Joe’s hand did not find his shoulder. He met Eddie’s parents, another wrench in his gut to the knife that had never left it. Shook their hands and told them their son had been a good friend, wondered at the bile in the back of his throat. He apologized to them, and knew that he was whispering more than condolences, more than the lip service given at funerals.

He still couldn't look Iris in the eye, couldn't bring himself to tell her he was sorry. How easy it was for everyone else to tell her so, when they had nothing to apologize for. How sick he felt, trying to muster the words that wouldn’t come, carrying Eddie’s body to his grave.

At the wake, Joe toasted to his partner and Barry tried to push aside the knowledge that it was Joe’s second such funeral in a little over a year, tried not to wonder if Chyre’s death still haunted him.

When he was twenty-five, Barry learned that death was full of regret. That black was a shroud not over the dead but over the living, and that loneliness separated even those who remained. That people were sorry not for someone’s loss, but for living and breathing despite it. Life must continue. It should have been me, his heart whispered, and he spent that night awake, rebuilding Eddie’s favorite bar, another thing destroyed by Barry’s bad choices.

 

[ … ]

 

Caitlin refused to hold a funeral for Ronnie. There was no body and she’d been through this before. There was already an empty grave for him. His parents hadn’t been informed he’d been alive still, his own choice until his powers settled, and now there was no need to reopen those wounds. She grieved with Martin, tucked away, and Barry could barely glance at her when he stopped by her house with flowers, a poor token but the only thing of color he knew to give.

Without prompting, she’d held his hand and told him that it wasn’t his fault, a reversal of who should be comforting whom, but they both knew that it was a beautiful lie. He didn’t have the energy or the grace to argue.

When he was twenty-five, Barry learned that there were days he would envy the dead. He learned, looking at Caitlin’s tired eyes, that grief was the price one paid for living. Loss dodges the heels of those who remain, and the only ones who were free of it were those who died first.

 

[ … ]

 

When he was twenty-six, Barry pulled his black suit back out of the closet for Francine’s funeral.

He brushed his fingers over it and tried to feel more than exhausted. For once, there was no guilt to plague his heart. For the first time in almost as far back as his memory could stretch, he could attend a funeral that wasn’t his fault. That wasn’t _anyone_ ’s fault.

He still felt sick with it though, looking down at the reality of another immaculately styled, beautiful body laying in a coffin. Worn thin by the knowledge that this was something no one could stop, not even by turning back time.

The funeral was small and Barry felt out of place among the scattered strangers, only here for moral support. Wally disappeared shortly after the ceremony. Joe looked tired and drawn, waved goodbye to Iris and Barry at the edge of the cemetery, and Barry suspected he was off to find company in a bottle of black-label whiskey.

Iris leaned into Barry’s side and sighed, lamented only that she wished they had had more time together. For a moment, unbidden, he almost couldn’t help but hate Francine. Iris had forgiven her, had loved her, but Barry didn’t think he would ever understand. He would give almost anything for one more day with his own mother, and here was a woman who had turned her back on her daughter—on her beautiful, smart, courageous daughter—and deprived her of thousands of days they could have shared together.

Iris told him she was glad Francine wouldn’t suffer anymore, and he hugged her tight and drove her home. Francine wouldn’t suffer, but Iris would, was.

When he was twenty-six, Barry learned that death wasn’t always something to apologize for. Sometimes, it was something to bear, to act as a reminder of what was important, of what to cherish. Sometimes all you could do was fight like hell for the living.

 

[ … ]

 

When he arrived late to Laurel’s funeral, Barry couldn’t dislodge the feeling that death accelerated as you aged. That the longer you lived, the more of it you would see. He was late because he was sick with it, because the bile in his stomach was rushing up his throat with each step forward.

He thought of her smile, her determination, her own loss and how it made her stronger, harder, but kinder too. He thought of everyone she left behind, the legacy she created, the people she had inspired.

The memories didn’t bring sorrow or comfort. He just felt hollow.

When he was twenty-six, Barry learned that you apologized at funerals because you had nothing more to offer. That everything you did have to offer, you would give, but even if you gave it all, it would not be enough. So you said sorry, because nothing would ever be enough to bring back the dead.

 

[ … ]

 

The day of his father’s funeral, Barry threw up in the toilet a minute after getting out of bed, not having slept. He couldn’t care, anymore, about who might feel satisfied by his defeat. There was no victory here. He was not victorious. He wasn’t sure if he ever had been, or if he’d merely been in a protracted stalemate from birth till now.

He threw no tantrums before getting dressed. He wished he could. He wished he could hide in the dark of the closet and still hope and believe and exist in a state of denial, as if not having a funeral, not seeing his father lowered into that grave, could make this less real. But it was never going to be any less real.

Death was always real.

Iris smoothed her hands over his shoulders, fixing the lines of his suit, her gaze too soft and worn, all at once. He ached to hold her, but his hands shook at the thought. The world was painted too red for him to hold her right now, for him to be anything but broken.

It was raining at the cemetery. The church had taken care of things for them, Barry had asked for a closed casket. He didn’t to see the body, to have his father made to look younger, smoother, as if the lines he earned from hardship could be erased in death. As if his death had been anything less than a brutal, twisted thing.

Barry wanted the last image he had of his father’s face to be an honest one. The man deserved that and so much more.

At his mother’s funeral, there had been a church full of people, the pews full to the back of the room. She had been loved, and her death was a tragedy.

At his father’s funeral, seven people stood in the rain.

Barry spent the morning whispering his eulogy to himself, and when it came time to honor his father, his throat caught on the words. “My father,” stopped him short. My father was a good man, and his death was a tragedy. Taken too soon from this world, he will be missed.

His father’s death was a tragedy, but Barry was the only one who would grieve him.

Death happens to the living, he knew by now. A black shroud that wrapped around everyone it touched, a cold comfort to settle on his shoulders and twist the knife that had buried itself in his stomach fifteen years ago. A hollow apology, filled with regret and longing, lonely.

Twenty years had passed since his first funeral, and Barry had thought he’d learned all there was to know about death. His old friend, come to call, again and again.

But as he placed a rose on his father’s casket, he did not apologize, and one more lesson came to him. At twenty-six, Barry learned that death was a promise.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Well... that happened. I just read someone else's short piece on Barry and funerals and physically /had/ to write something in the same vein. I recommend you check out the work that inspired this one too; it's very short, has a slight coldflash lean (one-sided, from what I interpret), but it gets across emotion very succinctly.
> 
> For me, I always take more words to explore anything. And grief is... something I can't help but explore, because it's something I understand. We can grieve any sort of loss, it's not always death, but I've been to more funerals than I can count on both hands, at this point. Most of those haven't been for people close to me, distant family members I'd met once or twice but the whole family was expected to attend, but some have hit closer to home. Exploring characters' grief appeals intrinsically to me, though I try not to do it too much. 
> 
> Barry has known a lot of grief though, and for me, it's endemic to understanding his character, how he relates to death.
> 
> So anyway, I hope you enjoyed this? Is enjoyed the right word? Ah well. Visit me at [my tumblr](http://coldtomyflash.tumblr.com) if you want to see more of the mess that is me.


End file.
